Kwaw Paintsil Ansah was born in 1941 in Agona
Swedru, Ghana. His mother was a trader, and his father a
photographer (as well as a painter, musician, and dramatist). After
his initial schooling at an Anglican mission school, he studied for
his O Levels in the capital city of Accra, while working as a textile
designer at the United Africa Company. He then moved to London to
study Theater Design at the London Polytechnic, and there he first
became interested in film production. He spent two years in New
York, studying Performing Arts at the American Academy of Dramatic
Arts from 1963 to 1965. He participated in various African student
groups in New York, and also was active in the theater world. He
founded the Abibirma Players in 1964, and his play "The Adoption" was
produced off-Broadway in 1964 at the Hermon Theater and at Columbia
University's Macmillan Theater.

In 1965 he moved to Los Angeles to study at the
American Musical and Dramatic Academy, whose director, Philip Burton
(Richard Burton's father), arranged a position for him at RKO
Studios. There, he gained a good deal of practical experience,
working on the TV series Hogan's Heroes and The Fugitive.

Upon his return to Ghana in 1965, Mr. Ansah was
able to find commercial work in film and television. He worked for
two years as a production assistant and set designer for the Ghana
Film Industry Corporation, and also made commercials for Lintas
Advertising in Accra. He went on to found his own advertising firm,
Target Advertising Services, in 1973. He continues to do commercial
advertising work (his company is now called Target Saatchi &
Saatchi Ltd.), which, he says, "pays the bills." One of his
television commercials won him a New York-based CLIO award in
1989.

Along with his commercial work, Ansah continued
his engagement with the world of theater and the arts. Soon after
his return to Ghana he became an executive member of the Ghana Drama
Association and the Ghana Association of Writers, and an officer of
the Film Guild of Ghana. His play Mother's Tears was
performed at the Drama Studio in Accra in 1967, and was instantly
successful. It would later be reprised at the Accra Arts Centre in
1973, and then in 1991, and at the National Theatre in
1995.

Kwaw Ansah's dream, however, was to make a
feature film, one that was both commercially viable and focused on
African themes and issues. To that end, he founded his film
production company, Film Africa Limited, in 1977, and began work on
the project that would become Love Brewed in the African Pot
(1980). It was an immediate popular success throughout
English-speaking Africa, handily beating all previous attendance
records for a film by an African director, while at the same time
earning critical acclaim and respect. The film earned awards
world-wide, including the prestigious Omarou Ganda Prize, for "most
remarkable direction and production in line with African realities"
at the seventh Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO)--the first to be
awarded a film from an Anglophone country; the UNESCO Film Award in
France, and the Jury's Special Silver Peacock Award, "For a Genuine
and Talented Attempt to Find a National and Cultural Identity" at the
8th International Film Festival of India.

Despite all the awards and the success, it would
be nearly ten years before Ansah could complete his next major film
project, the ambitious Heritage Africa (1989). Ansah faced
the enormous challenges that are the bane of filmmakers in Africa.
Making the film was one long struggle to find the money and corral
the necessary resources. As was the case with Love Brewed, he had
his hand in nearly all aspects of the film's production--even writing
the theme music for the two films, along with directing, writing, and
producing. However, it was the logistical challenges that were most
overwhelming. It was an exhausting, even debilitating
process.

He emerged from the experience with his health
seriously compromised, but with an impressive, widely-acclaimed film.
Heritage Africa won the grand prize at FESPACO in 1989 (again, the
first from an an Anglophone country), the Organization for African
Unity's Best Film Award, Outstanding Film Award at the 1989 London
Film Festival, and numerous others.

Since Heritage, Ansah has limited his
film work to documentaries, with Crossroads of People; Crossroads
of Trade (1994), funded by the Smithsonian Institute. He was
also heavily involved in the 1996 continent-wide project, Hopes On
the Horizon, serving as Co -Executive Producer. Unfortunately,
this project fell apart over disagreements between the African
directors and their African-American counterparts.

Much of his time these days is spent as a
crusader for African filmmaking and dramatic art,, working
ceaselessly for improved funding and distribution of African films
within Africa. He has been chairman of FEPACI--the Federation of
African Filmmakers--and a leader in the direction of FESPACO, the
showcase festival for films from Africa and the African diaspora. He
also, of course, appears at film festivals such as ours around the
world, representing not only himself but African filmmakers in
general, explaining the vicissitudes, as well as the many beauties,
of filmmaking in Africa.

Kwaw Ansah is highly appreciated in his own
country, where he is a mentor to many young artists, and has received
a number of Ghanaian awards. In 1998 he was awarded the Acrag Prize,
the Living Legend Award for Contribution to the Arts of
Ghana.

It is an honor to welcome Mr. Ansah to Portland
for the Tenth Festival.